Requiring a landlord to reduce the rent for a tenant by 20% due to "Corona"

A ruling by the Rental Dispute Resolution Center obligated a tenant to reduce the rental value of a tenant by 20%, due to Corona's circumstances.

The ruling, whose merits were reviewed by Emirates Today, stated that the lawsuit is due to a dispute over the rental value of a hotel facility between the owner and the company that runs the hotel.

In detail, the details of the ruling indicated that the hotel owner had filed a lawsuit demanding the company renting the hotel for the value of the contracted rent, but the latter refused to pay due to the circumstances of Corona, but the court obliged it to pay, in a court of first instance, but it appealed the first instance ruling, indicating to the court that during the lease period, it was done. Close most of the hotel facility facilities in compliance with the orders of the competent authorities, and concurrent with the precautionary measures related to the spread of the Coronavirus.

The case papers clarified that the rental value of the hotel facility is three million dirhams and five hundred thousand dirhams, for a lease period of three years, which is the amount that the owner mentioned in his claim in the first instance, and the court obligated it to the company that runs the hotel, which changed in the degree of appeal after Listening to all parties and reviewing all documents, as the court obligated the landlord to reduce the rent for the tenant by 20%, in exchange for the facilities that were not used during the months of closure due to Corona.

And it has been proven in the report submitted by the company that runs the hotel and from the documents attached to it, that an administrative decision was issued by the Department of Tourism and Real Estate Marketing in Dubai has limited the use of some elements of the leased property as part of the precautionary measures taken by the state to confront the Corona pandemic by postponing all activities, which include Night clubs, recreational activities, health and fitness, and catering services, by limiting the intensity of occupancy, all before the start of the claim period and continued for a period during which .. so that the tenant’s use of the rented building was not complete during part of the claim period due to force majeure. As a result of the precautionary measures taken in the country to confront the Korna pandemic, as it was impossible for him to fully benefit from some of its elements during this part of the claim period, and the impossibility was partly restricted by temporary requirements for a number of other elements during the same period .. while he remained fully benefiting from the rest of the building elements The lessor, which is what authorizes him according to the correct law - considering that the fee is in exchange for usufruct - the right to implement the text of Article (273) of the Civil Transactions Law to demand the termination or

Rather, dropping the rent allowance within the limits of what corresponds to the missed benefits.

The committee considered that the equivalent of 20% of the value of the claim should be dropped, in recognition of the circumstances that resulted from the force majeure referred to above ... and the committee considers that the aforementioned percentage achieves a fair balance between the amount of the benefit lost to the lessee and the corresponding rent allowance due on it. To be obligatory at only 2856000 dirhams.

The ruling was based on the Civil Transactions Law, in which Article (750) indicates that the fee is due by collecting the benefit from the property or by being able to collect it.

Article (273) of the same law stipulates that “in contracts that are binding on both sides, if a force majeure arises that makes the implementation of the obligation impossible, the corresponding obligation expires and the contract is terminated on its own, and if the impossibility is partial, what corresponds to the impossible part has passed and this provision applies to the temporary impossibility. In continuous contracts, and in these two cases, the creditor may cancel the contract provided the debtor is aware.

The matter has been settled in the trials in this type of case that if the tenant is deprived of the use of the leased property or his use of it is impaired for a reason that has no influence or even the lessor has a hand in it, such as if that is due to force majeure or to the loss of the property, then the consequences of that fall on The lessor (the owner) should bear either the cancellation of the rent or the reduction of the rent.

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